OPB "Wide Angle"
So I am watching this documentary on Turkey. It is very interesting, about women and their veiws on wearing the chador. It is really neat about how they are bringing ideas of fasion into their country while maintaining their tradintions.
They show how they are creating different color and patterned head scarfs. This is to allow some fasion but at the same time keep it simple enough to appeal to conservative people.
One model that was focused on would adhere to the dress code of the runway, but outside she wore non secular clothing.
The show was showing the split of how people belive they should present theirselves to the Islamic world. Non Secular and conservative sides.
Also after the show they interviewed a political cartoonist for a Turkish newspaper.
Here are some of his cartoons if you want to imagine:
Uncle Sam was sitting on a big elephant and was about to go into a building labeled "Middle East: Glassware"
This cartoon was showing that it is okay for america (western world) to come into the middle east, but be respectful. Don't be an elephant in a glass shop. If you aren't careful big problems can be created.
The next cartoon was President Bush pushing a snowman into the middle east with a sign around its neck that said "DEMOCRACY"
This cartoon showed that bring democracy into the middle east may not be the best. It will "melt" like a snowman would in the hot weather. Perhaps democracy could work, however it cannot be a clone of the western world. Changes would have to be done for it to work.
2 comments:
I agree with you in a sense that American democracy won't work for them. I mean the so-called democracy here is really not that democratic. Democracy itself is not bad, but true democracy cannot always be achieved, especially when you have elites and people in power manipulating many aspects in the society, hence manipulating people's minds and creating a false democracy. Changes definitely have to be made, and I think one of them has to involve educating people with the truth, so people can make informed decisions based on the truths, not on what they are told to believe.
I like your interpretations of the comics. I think the snowman comic represents a forign entity (democracy) as something that the people don't even know exists (snow.) Basically snow has never been apart of their lives, and neither has democracy, so it is silly to think that it will instantly be accepted as normal.
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